W.H. Auden, also known as Wystan Hugh Auden, was a Anglo-American  poet, author and playwright . Wystan Hugh Auden was born on February 21, 1907, in York, England. He was the last of three sons born to George and Constance Auden. His father was the medical officer for the city of Birmingham, England, and a psychologist. His mother was a devoted Anglican (a member of the Church of England).  Auden was educated at Oxford University, graduating in 1928. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1937.

In 1928, Auden published his first book of verse, and his collection Poems, published in 1930, which established him as the leading voice of a new generation. Auden's poems in the latter half of the 1930s reflected his journeys to politically torn countries. He wrote his acclaimed anthology, Spain, based on his first-hand accounts of the country's civil war from 1936 to 1939. In his final years Auden wrote the volumes City without Walls, and Many Other Poems (1969), Epistle to a Godson, and Other Poems (1972), and Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (1974), which was published posthumously . He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.